My opinion on Emma Roberts is that she’s a pretty little thing, she’s kind of smug and conceited, and that she’s still very, very young. I keep hoping that she’ll grow out of her youthful “I’m better, and I know everything” attitude, but the years keep passing and she just stays the same. Lainey at LaineyGossip had an interesting take on Emma when Lainey interviewed her at Sundance this year – go here for the post. The kid sounds like a massive brat. So is it surprising that Julia Roberts’ niece idolizes Gwyneth Paltrow? Not really. I can see her identifying with a woman who is one of the worst examples of Hollywood nepotism is a good role model. Anyway, Emma is profiled in the new Elle Magazine, and she has a lot to say:

Despite Emma Roberts’ best efforts to carve her own swath through Hollywood rather than capitalize on her famous DNA, you just can’t look at her large, gleaming, slightly lopsided smile and not be reminded of her aunt Julia. The younger Roberts credits her aunt with sparking her desire to act by bringing her to movie sets when she was little; Emma’s first (uncredited) role, in fact, was as an extra in 2001’s America’s Sweethearts.

“I was always running around to the makeup trailer and the wardrobe trailer, trying on clothes, and letting people do my hair,” she says. “I loved it.”

Still, the 20-year-old, whose parents, actor Eric Roberts and teacher Kelly Cunningham, split when she was an infant, names two different leading ladies as her role models.

“Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson have made names for themselves regardless of the fact that their parents were famous,” she says. “I’d like to have a career like that too.”

For a former Nickelodeon tween star—she played musically inclined seventh-grader Addie Singer in the series Unfabulous from 2004 to 2007 and released a CD, Unfabulous and More, in 2005—Roberts has already built up quite a diverse résumé. Since debuting as Johnny Depp’s daughter in the 2001 drug-smuggling saga Blow at age nine, she’s genre-jumped between romantic ensembles (Valentine’s Day, costarring her aunt), innocuous family fare (Hotel for Dogs, Nancy Drew), and gritty indies (British crime caper 4.3.2.1), while also logging cred time opposite comedy titans Alec Baldwin (Lymelife) and Zach Galifianakis, with whom she starred as a troubled teen in a mental institution in last year’s sweetly low-key It’s Kind of a Funny Story.

With her appearance in this month’s Scream 4, as Jill Roberts, the girl-next-door cousin of Neve Campbell’s character, she can check horror off the list too. “There were times when we were filming in a weird house at 2 a.m. and I’d get really spooked out,” she says, “but what I’ve always loved about the Scream films is that they’ll have you terrified one moment and laughing the next.”

Just as her career begins to pick up serious steam, Roberts plans to begin college at Sarah Lawrence in the fall—“unless something big comes along.” (She deferred last year, after being cast in Valentine’s Day.) Like anyone in her profession, she’s a movie buff—“I’m a huge Wes Anderson fan; I would faint if I met him, let alone got to work with him.”

But her Twitter feed, refreshingly, name-drops the authors she’s reading (Joan Didion and Chuck Palahniuk are favorites) rather than the parties she’s attending.

“I think it’s important to have stuff to talk about other than work,” she says, admitting that she feels uncommonly mature for someone so young. Yet unlike many actresses her age, who play up their sex appeal in order to fast-forward the transition to grown-up roles, Roberts seems to delight in that wonderful, fleeting moment of being in between.

“I can still play a high school student if I want, or I can play older,” she says. “I don’t have to limit myself right now, so why should I?”

[From Elle]

Yeah… she still sounds like a brat. To me, at least. I’m sure that some people will defend her, and that’s fine. Maybe she’ll grow into a well-adjusted, humble young woman. Or maybe it will just get worse and worse until her maniacal cackle takes over from her Aunt Julia’s.

Also, here’s a thought – shouldn’t Emma be judged by the same standards as her peers? Mia Wasikowska is one year older than Emma, and Mia has never come across as bratty, smug or anything other than interesting and professional. Mia has a better career too. I’m just sayin’.

Photos courtesy of Elle.